R.I.P. UARS

“Because we don’t know where the re-entry point actually was, we don’t know where the debris field might be. We may never know.”
 — A NASA scientist comments on the “suicidal” death of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), an aging and no longer functional satellite that crashed back to earth, somewhere, in the early hours of Saturday morning. It’s fondly remembered in this strangely touching pseudo-obituary, and is remembered less lovingly, but with more pictures, here.